This invention relates to cooled flywheel apparatus.
Flywheels are used as energy storage devices. In a typical application, a flywheel is connected to a motor-generator and electrical power is input to the motor-generator to spin up the flywheel. Later, power can be extracted from the flywheel by connecting an electrical load to the motor-generator. To minimize windage losses, the flywheel rotor typically operates in a partial vacuum environment.
Flywheels have been used in applications such as power smoothing for wind turbines. Because of their continuous operation, heat build-up in the flywheel rotor is a problem that risks early failure of a flywheel apparatus.